Kartaview MCP Server

@pipeworx/kartaview

KartaView (formerly OpenStreetCam) — open, crowdsourced street-level imagery contributed by OpenStreetMap mappers, CC BY-SA, with GPS position, compass heading and capture date on every frame.

Part of Pipeworx — an MCP gateway connecting AI agents to 1683+ live data sources.

Tools

• kartaview_nearby_sequences(lat, lng, radius_m) — street-level photos near a point, grouped into the drives that captured them, nearest first.
• kartaview_sequence_photos(sequence_id) — every frame of one drive in capture order, with JPEG URLs.

Auth

Keyless.

Data sources

• https://api.openstreetcam.org/1.0/list/nearby-photos/ — POST form lat, lng, radius.
• https://api.openstreetcam.org/1.0/sequence/photo-list/ — POST form sequenceId.

Notes the next person would otherwise rediscover:

• The host serves two APIs and only the 1.0 one is anonymous. The 2.0 read endpoints (/2.0/sequence/?lat=&lng=) answer {"status":{"apiCode":401, "apiMessage":"You have to be authenticated..."}} — inside an HTTP 200. So a 200 from this host proves nothing; status.apiCode must be 600. kvPost() checks it on every call.
• Both endpoints are POST with a form body. The GET forms 400.
• Photo fields are storage-relative paths (storage13/files/photo/...), not URLs, and the storage number in the path is not the hostname that serves it. Prefixing https://api.openstreetcam.org/ redirects to the right storage host; building https://storage13.openstreetcam.org/storage13/... 404s.
• nearby-photos returns PHOTOS, not sequences, and has no sequence endpoint that is keyless — so the pack groups by sequence_id itself and computes the distance to each hit, which the upstream does not return.
• Coverage is volunteer-contributed: dense in cities with active OSM communities, empty elsewhere. An empty result is a coverage fact, not an error, and the tool says so.

Quick Start

Add to your MCP client (Claude Desktop, Cursor, Windsurf, etc.):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "kartaview": {
      "url": "https://gateway.pipeworx.io/kartaview/mcp"
    }
  }
}

What this endpoint actually serves

tools/list at https://gateway.pipeworx.io/kartaview/mcp returns the tools in the table above plus the shared Pipeworx meta-tools — ask_pipeworx, discover_tools, search_within, remember/recall and the rest of the gateway-wide set. So the tool count you see is larger than this table: a single-pack endpoint currently lists roughly 30 shared tools alongside the pack's own. The connection's initialize response states its exact scope, and is the authoritative answer for a given day.

This is deliberate, not multiplexing by accident. The meta-tools are what let a scoped connection answer a question this pack does not cover — via ask_pipeworx, which routes across the whole catalog — without you adding a second MCP server. There is currently no way to mount a pack endpoint without them; if the extra schemas cost you more context than the routing is worth, connect to the full gateway once rather than to several pack endpoints.

Or connect to the full Pipeworx gateway to get every pack's tools listed directly, instead of just this one's:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "pipeworx": {
      "url": "https://gateway.pipeworx.io/mcp"
    }
  }
}

Both URLs reach the same gateway and the same 1683+ data sources. The only difference is which pack's tools are listed directly; ask_pipeworx reaches all of them from either one.

No MCP client? Call it over HTTP

curl -X POST https://gateway.pipeworx.io/v1/tools/kartaview_nearby_sequences \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  -d '{"lat":52.3676,"lng":4.9041,"radius_m":300,"limit":3}'

No account needed for the first calls. Inspect any tool: GET https://gateway.pipeworx.io/v1/tools/kartaview_nearby_sequences. Find one: POST https://gateway.pipeworx.io/v1/tools/search_packs with {"query":"..."}.

Standalone (no gateway account)

This package also runs as a local stdio MCP server — no Pipeworx account, no gateway round-trip:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "kartaview": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "@pipeworx/mcp-kartaview"]
    }
  }
}

Or run it directly to confirm it starts:

npx -y @pipeworx/mcp-kartaview

It speaks MCP over stdin/stdout and answers initialize/tools/list/tools/call for only this pack's tools — none of the shared meta-tools the gateway connection above adds. Same source, same tools, no ask_pipeworx routing.

Using with ask_pipeworx

Instead of calling tools directly, you can ask questions in plain English — this works on the pack endpoint above as well as on the full gateway:

ask_pipeworx({ question: "your question about Kartaview data" })

The gateway picks the right tool and fills the arguments automatically.

More

• Docs and guides
• pipeworx.io

License

MIT